Svinafell glacier, Iceland: up close and personal with Vatnajokull glaciers

On the third day in Iceland, we drove through pouring rain at night in utter darkness. The area between the waterfalls at Seljalandsfoss  and the glacier Svinafell is nearly empty, except for the small village of Vik. About 150 miles or so in pouring rain, we finally found our resting place for the night, the little cabins of Tjaldsvæðið í Svínafelli. It was hard to find the place in darkness, around 11pm, also because it was some distance away from the Ring Road. We called the owner of the place in advance to let him know of our coming in late, and he was nice enough to be there, waiting for us, late at night. 

We could barely see where we were that night, but the next morning we woke up to paradise. Our cabin was right next to a large unending field of green, with azure blue skies, and on our back was a hill. Behind the hill was the Svinafell glacier, a part of the Vatnajokull National Park. The place was nearly empty, and idyllic. The sun was shining on a blue sky. A cup of coffee sitting outside was in order.

After breakfast, we went on to see the Svinafell glacier, in the shadow of which we had slept last night. The glacier is one of many that flow out of Vatnajokull icefield, the largest icefield in all of Europe, likely the third largest after Antarctica and Greenland. There are many many glaciers around this part of Iceland, Skaftafell, Svinafell, Skalafell, to name a few. We hiked along the Svinafell glacier as far as we safely could. The glacier was mind-bogglingly beautiful, so we sat around soaking in all the beauty of the place for hours. 

Exposure to such beauty clearly leads to introspection, as we saw people sitting around, lost in their own thoughts in the quiet of the slowly moving glacier.